Page 2 of Treasured By the Hunter

“Yeah,” I said, looking back toward the house, still a little confused about what had just happened.

“Come on, get in. We’ve got company.” Diego adjusted the mirror.

I craned my neck to look behind me, and there was a group of bugs we called scuttlers turning onto the street.

While it was generally accepted that flyers were scorpions with wings, descriptions of scuttlers varied depending on who you asked.

Some people thought the rottweiler-sized creatures were closer to spiders; some thought they were more like ants butwith extra legs. I was of the latter camp, especially since they usually traveled in groups. There was never just one. The one thing everyone agreed on was that their forelimbs looked like those of mantises. And like mantises, they were predators.

Diego gunned it, putting distance between us and the killer invertebrates.

“Phew! That was a close one.” Riley leaned against me. “But this was a good haul. Plenty of electronic parts to trade with Sanctuary and Vegas.”

“And baby supplies, too,” Diego added. “Lots of pregnant women last time we were at Sanctuary. Everyone’s getting busy.”

“Being trapped behind settlement walls all winter would do that,” I said, hiding the fact that I was just a bit envious of these people who were able to live an almost normal life in this not-so-normal bugpocalypse.

We made it back to our hideout, keeping one step ahead of the bugs. Diego’s brother, Tomas, greeted us at the door. It was still mentally jarring to see the teenager, barely even old enough to grow a scraggly beard, holding an AR-15, but that was life now. Tomas held down the fort while we went out foraging, though he’d recently gone out on his first foraging trip with us. Diego clapped his brother on the back and tossed him a chocolate bar we’d found on our trip.

“Any news on Corey?” I asked.

“No. He never came back.”

“And good riddance!” Riley said what we all were thinking. She peeked around the corner into the main room, probably looking for Connor, our unofficial leader.

Corey was Connor’s brother. Up until very recently, he’d traveled with another group of nomads. Their group was the type that gave nomads everywhere a bad name. They were just as likely to rob the living as they were to liberate unused goods from the dead. No one in our group liked him, but we understood Connor’s need to keep in touch with the only family he had left.

Corey had shown up one evening several months ago, claiming that some crazy Xarc’n warrior had massacred everyone in his group for no reason. We were sure that wasn’t the entire story. That just wasn’t how the Xarc’n warriors worked. We also knew his group had messed with the hunters, stealing their shuttles.

But still, because he was family, Connor let him in. That had been a mistake. He’d been nothing but trouble.

According to Corey, their group still had one more shuttle, and since everyone was dead, it belonged to him. But, surprise surprise, he needed help getting to it. Connor wasn’t interested, and neither were any of us. So we ignored him.

He also kept trying to get us to join this thing called the New Earth Militia. It was a new coalition of many smaller groups, and their main goal was to take Earth back from the aliens. And by aliens, they meant the purple kind. We’d heard of them and weren’t interested. Their priorities were screwed up. The bugs were the problem, not the hunters.

Things started to get really uncomfortable after Connor told him that if he mentioned the NEM or the shuttle one more time, he’d be out of the group. Then, two days ago, we had a group meeting and decided that after our next trade run with Sanctuary, we were going to give that New Franklin place we kept hearing about a visit. It was quite a bit out of the way, butthe rumor that they’d managed to destroy their bug nest and reclaim the town was worthy of the travel.

Corey had flipped out. He’d called us monster lovers, human haters, and traitors. That was because it was generally known that the human settlement at New Franklin had achieved the unachievable by working with Xarc’n hunters.

Hunters, just like the one from today who smelled of autumn leaves.

Corey had stomped out, but not before he’d wished us all dead. It had been tough on Connor, though I’d mentally cheered the asshat’s departure.

Tomas helped me carry our new foraged goodies into our hideout. This was just one safe house out of many. Living as nomads meant we had dozens of hideouts dotting the usual routes we took, as we served as much-needed connections between settlements.

“How you doing, Connor?” I punched my longtime friend in the arm.

“Same old, same old.” He looked like hell warmed over. Looking at the rest of the group, he said, “We’re just waiting on Dean and Jenny to get back. Then we’re heading out tomorrow. We’ll hit up Sanctuary next.”

“Didn’t Corey say they won’t let him back in there?” Diego asked.

Corey hadn’t been forthright about that until after we let him in. Apparently, his group had been banned from Sanctuary for life. After a lot of probing, we finally got the full story.

Corey’s group had withheld vital medicines from Sanctuary and forced the settlement to take in a Xarc’n alien as a prisoner.That had resulted in the alien’s friend crashing a shuttle into one of their buildings to rescue him, then stealing one of the settlement women in the process.

We’d heard about the event—who hadn’t? It was all every nomad group had talked about for months—but we hadn’t realized it was Corey’s group that had started it.

I thought of the giant alien warrior I’d nearly bulldozed over earlier on my way down the stairs.

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